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| Our Survivor Anole |
Last week, Namiri caught a lizard and brought it inside the house, presumely as a gift to show appreciation to her loving mother. However; things took a turn when the lizard bit down on Namiri's paw causing her to yelp and cry, which is what brought the entire situation to my attention in the first place. After some difficulty removing its jaw-grip on her paw, and not knowing whether it was dead or alive, I put it in the garbage can outside. And forgot about it. Until today, when I was taking out the trash and saw the lizard when I lifted the lid, alive!!! Poor little thing had been trapped in there for nearly a week! And we've had multiple nights when the temperatures have been below freezing, so it's quite the miracle that it survived! All I can think is that it stayed warm enough in there and was able to feed on some bugs while trapped. It wasn't moving very fast so I lifted it out and put it on the lid in the sun to try and heat up its cold blood. Seeing that it was so lethargic, I tried to give it some berries. It wasn't interested. I was worried he was going to be too weak to get down on his own and might freeze in the night without shelter, so I brought out an insulated lunchbox for it to use as a potential shelter. My roommate suggested we make it a little terrarium inside and nurse it back to health. But then he crawled down into the leaves, so we thought it was better to let it be on its own. But man, that lizard is a SURVIVOR!!!
Turns out that it was a Green Anole (Anolis Carolinensis) which are native to this area according to this website and are sometimes confused with chameleons because they can change their color between shades of green and brown. The males have awesome pinkish red throat fans that they can puff out at predators/potential mates. I don't recall whether this one had the throat fan or not, but I am going to choose to remember this anole as a survivor, and thus, name it Beyonce. The End.
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| Photo by J.D. Willson |
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| Photo by J.D. Willson |
